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3 Big Issues +1

1. FT shooting. Obviously. Just atrocious and Iíve never seen anything like it.

2. Defense in second half was not good.

3. WTF has happened to Jordan Murphy? I feel like he hurts the team more than helps it lately. FTís...stupid fouls...no offensive game.

+1 - From 13:48 to 1:16 in the second half, they called one foul on Maryland. One. It was unbelievable. I know they were in a zone, blah blah blah. But there were several drives with major contact uncalled. And this was at home. It was sickening. I know for sure Washington was hacked big time on the arm on the play that then led to a 3 for Maryland (this seemed to be the key moment in the game), and how McBrayer didnít get a call on a late drive was equally crazy.

I realize we would have missed all the FTís, but that was something else.

1. FT shooting. Obviously. Just atrocious and Iíve never seen anything like it.

2. Defense in second half was not good.

3. WTF has happened to Jordan Murphy? I feel like he hurts the team more than helps it lately. FTís...stupid fouls...no offensive game.

+1 - From 13:48 to 1:16 in the second half, they called one foul on Maryland. One. It was unbelievable. I know they were in a zone, blah blah blah. But there were several drives with major contact uncalled. And this was at home. It was sickening. I know for sure Washington was hacked big time on the arm on the play that then led to a 3 for Maryland (this seemed to be the key moment in the game), and how McBrayer didnít get a call on a late drive was equally crazy.

I realize we would have missed all the FTís, but that was something else.

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As I recall, McBrayer's forward momentum towards the basket while shooting was completely stopped by mid air body contact and yet no call

The fact is, Oturu just isn't very skilled at this point in his playing career and needs to sharpen up his basketball IQ. Wasted an easy fast break opportunity by holding on the the ball. He may be good against lowly mid majors but he has a lot of work to do to remain competitive against B1G opponents. His rebounding is definitely there tho!

McBrayer really isn't a good three point shooter and misses far too many wide open ones. He brings other stuff to the team, but outside of his sophomore year his 3pt shooting numbers are horrid. Not sure why people think of him as a good shooter.

The fact is, Oturu just isn't very skilled at this point in his playing career and needs to sharpen up his basketball IQ. Wasted an easy fast break opportunity by holding on the the ball. He may be good against lowly mid majors but he has a lot of work to do to remain competitive against B1G opponents. His rebounding is definitely there.

Oturu had a double double. He had a pretty good game. No Toís and an assist. Heís at the bottom of my list of Gopher shortcomings.

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"Bad luck and trouble, two of my best friends"....Lightnin' Hopkins song about the Gophers

The fact is, Oturu just isn't very skilled at this point in his playing career and needs to sharpen up his basketball IQ. Wasted an easy fast break opportunity by holding on the the ball. He may be good against lowly mid majors but he has a lot of work to do to remain competitive against B1G opponents. His rebounding is definitely there tho!

McBrayer really isn't a good three point shooter and misses far too many wide open ones. He brings other stuff to the team, but outside of his sophomore year his 3pt shooting numbers are horrid. Not sure why people think of him as a good shooter.

Oruro is a freshman, they make mistakes. McBrayer shot 35% last year. I call that average to above average. Correct that he is struggling this year. He had a couple wide open ones against the zone he needs to hit. To his credit, he did miss some time this year....

This game was FTs and the scoring drought in the second half. Long shots led to to misses and some easy transition buckets for Maryland. Cowan went nuts too.

Main issue vs Maryland: Our relative lack of talent. We have a nice team, but the talent differential was fairly obvious. Maryland > Wisconsin by quite a bit based on my observations tonight. The rule of thumb seems to be that you need three studs that can take over a game. Maryland has that (Fernando, Smith, Cowan). MN has two (Coffey, Murphy), but Murphy is neutralized when he plays against skilled length as he is only about 6í6Ē.

Bottom line is we lost to a better team, but the difference is not as great as the final score. We are a bad FT-shooting team, but not 39% bad.

Oruro is a freshman, they make mistakes. McBrayer shot 35% last year. I call that average to above average. Correct that he is struggling this year. He had a couple wide open ones against the zone he needs to hit. To his credit, he did miss some time this year....

This game was FTs and the scoring drought in the second half. Long shots led to to misses and some easy transition buckets for Maryland. Cowan went nuts too.

This game was the inability to stop anything in the second half. This team will always have scoring droughts but they canít afford to give up nearly 50 in a half if they want to win games.

On Murphy, he's hurt by this team not having a point guard on the floor and even more by the lack of perimeter shooting. I thought there would be more room to operate for Murphy this year on the block now that he had an actual basketball player next to him in the front court in Oturu or Curry. Look at some of the possessions where Maryland's bigs scores and they either had a whole side of the floor to work their post up one on one or got a deep paint touch that just required them to go straight up and score. Murphy might still struggle some in the latter scenario over length, but should draw some fouls (and unfortunately miss some free throws). The former situation is more troubling though as there is consistently no space for Murphy (or anyone) to really operate on offense. The only times it does seem like the Gophers get some easy looks is when Washington is in the game and creating off the dribble. Unfortunately those good looks are negated by poor decision making from Isaiah. The other issue with Murphy is he's never developed his offensive game to include a perimeter jump shot. Remember the Providence game to start last year? Murphy was hitting from 15 with regularity and looked like a potential All American. It turned out to just be a fortunate shooting game and not a sign of development.

[QUOTE=Gold Vision;1670344]This game was the inability to stop anything in the second half. This team will always have scoring droughts but they canít afford to give up nearly 50 in a half if they want to win games.[/QUOTE

Yes, but offensive decisions make for some easier shots. It wasn't all just bad defense. It's not as black and white as just a number of points. A couple transition shots that turned back around and led to wide open threes and lay ups were killers. Washington was hacked terribly on one at Cowan hit the 3 on, but some other quick shots hurt us.

On Murphy, he's hurt by this team not having a point guard on the floor and even more by the lack of perimeter shooting. I thought there would be more room to operate for Murphy this year on the block now that he had an actual basketball player next to him in the front court in Oturu or Curry. Look at some of the possessions where Maryland's bigs scores and they either had a whole side of the floor to work their post up one on one or got a deep paint touch that just required them to go straight up and score. Murphy might still struggle some in the latter scenario over length, but should draw some fouls (and unfortunately miss some free throws). The former situation is more troubling though as there is consistently no space for Murphy (or anyone) to really operate on offense. The only times it does seem like the Gophers get some easy looks is when Washington is in the game and creating off the dribble. Unfortunately those good looks are negated by poor decision making from Isaiah. The other issue with Murphy is he's never developed his offensive game to include a perimeter jump shot. Remember the Providence game to start last year? Murphy was hitting from 15 with regularity and looked like a potential All American. It turned out to just be a fortunate shooting game and not a sign of development.

Been saying for three years he needed to develop J from 15-18 ft. He would then be deadly. Hasnt happened.